All Andhra is agog over the recently announced selections of
Congress candidates for the forthcoming provincial elections. From all I hear,
the members of the Parliamentary Board seem to have made little effort to
determine their choice from the standpoint of the competence of the competing
candidates. Each of the members of the Board appears to have been allowed to
have his own way in dealing with the candidates belonging to his district. In
return, he conceded to his colleagues a similar pampering. Some districts are
not represented on the Board. These were allotted to members belonging to other
districts either individually or in combinations of more than one.
* * *
The members struck a bargain for agreed use, for personal
interests of the power placed in their hands for public purposes. No wonder
that strange decisions should have been arrived at. Vennelakanti Raghaviah of
Nellore was one of the applicants turned down. Not one of those selected for
the various constituencies in the district can hold a candle to him either in
point of public spirit, knowledge of affairs, intelligence, or actual record of
loyalty to the Congress. I am averse to measure political worth with
jail-going. For one thing, the strides that the national movement has taken,
has left imprisonment much in the rear as a form of suffering. Jail has become
a tame affair. These are days when maiming and shooting have come to be of too
frequent occurrence for duress in prison to serve any longer as pull with the
public for the elicitation of sympathy. Secondly, the exploitation of prison
tenure for political purposes has gone much too far. Politicians with an eye on
ministerial chances have, in obedience to Congress mandates, gone to prison
reluctantly, and from that moment onwards spent their ingenuity for achieving
paroles and releases. The pretence of revolutionary zest is shown to be pretty
thin in the light of doings of this sort, for all the proclamations in honour
of it blown from public platforms. Some of Vennelakanti’s successful rivals
might have claimed attention at the hands of the Parliamentary Board for the
spell of jail life that they have had. If so, he has had it too, not less
often, and for as long if not more. Also, he stuck to it without angling for
liberation through tenacious canvassings of influence.
* * *
Social service for the benefit of Yanadis, that deserves to
be characterized as truly epic, stands to the credit of Raghaviah. The Yanadis
are a tribe peculiar to Nellore district. Ten years ago they were a ragged
slovenly lot that found idleness heavenly, bathed rarely, lived on the streets,
helped themselves to leavings of cast-off food from pavements and dust-bins and
occupied a sub-human level midway between slaves and dogs and cattle. To-day
they form a robust, lively, agreeable, decent-looking community on the social landscape
of the district. Their traditional hang-dog look has disappeared. They have
begun to dress smartly. They are taking to schools and brilliant young men are
rising in their midst. For all this transformation, praise is due to Raghaviah
more than to any other man. But the rich landlords do not like him. They look
upon him with aversion, holding him responsible for loss of domijnation over
this very community to which he has been able to impart a new consciousness of
rights, dignity and self-respect.
* * *
The Parliamentary Board stands condemned in withholding the
Congress ticket from an applicant of Raghaviah’s sterling political worth. The
same may be said of their manner of treating Sri Unnava Lakshminarayana and
Ramakotiswara Rao, brave souls both, of singularly unostentatious manner,
steadfast will and refined emotions. For purity of being they are household
words in their localities. Discarding them, whom has the Parliamentary Board
singled out for their favour? Among the candidates of their choice it is
painful to find a good sprinkling of persons who ought not to have any place in
a legislature: political non-entities, the war-made rich and time servers of
questionable antecedents.
* * *
The Board is accountable to the public for its mishandling of
the whole business of selecting candidates. Love of Congress will make the
people vote for anyone put up in the name of the Congress, but wrong selection
of candidates is turning what should be a source of joy at the polling booth
into a matter of reluctant reconcilement with a painful contingency. These
dispensers of Congress tickets are responsible for a reckless squandering of
precious Congress influence stored with immense labour in the past, and in the
very name of serving the Congress they have been disrupting it. When I carried
my misgivings to Sri Prakasam, he gave a patient hearing but said nothing. But
he somehow gave me the impression that he too has been a helpless witness to
much he disapproved of and could not prevent, in the proceedings of the Parliamentary
Board.—(February 23, 1946) S A K A.
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